Long Time Passing
by Liquid Laughter
Summary: "Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair." -Susan Polis Shutz


_Disclaimer: Neither the wonderful realm of Harry Potter, or the Pete Seeger song from which this title drew its name, belong to me. And it's a total bummer._

* * *

_(Long Time) Passing_

* * *

_For my darling baby sister, who is currently away from home,_

_Dealing with something of a vexing and lonely living situation,_

_And who will, I hope, retain her rather endearing spark and fire and pizzazz, _

_In spite of aforementioned conditions._

* * *

She's standing by the window, fingertips pressed against the glass, glancing out longingly at the world that she can no longer venture into.

Her hair – her lovely, vibrant, fiery hair – is the last bit of her that holds some fight, and it remains bright and fierce and defiant even as her face grows pale and her eyes lose their spark, and he decides right then and there that his favorite color will always be red.

He crosses the room to stand behind her, and he can tell that she is aware of him in the way her head tilts up as her hands drop listlessly from the windows to hang at her sides. (The defeat in that small action nearly breaks his heart.)

"This place is all wrong for you, isn't it?" he asks quietly, wrapping his arms around her. She pulls him closer as he curls himself protectively around her, and he catches that whiff of clean earth and something soft and floral that is so uniquely her. "Lilies need sunlight and air and rain…it's killing you, being shut away from the world, huh?" She doesn't answer, but then again, it wasn't really a question in the first place.

Her silence makes the silent stillness of the house (except for the _tick tick tick_ of that damned clock on their wall) seem louder, deadlier; more full of empty promises. Suddenly he can't take any of it anymore: the quiet, the monotony; the way they have to constantly keep Harry quiet and the way her smiles are always tinged with sadness nowadays (the way he feels that sodding clock is _tick tick ticking_ away his future, keeping track of the few precious moments he's got left with his wife and his son). His desperation explodes out of him in that same way his enthusiasm used to, and he turns her in his arms, making promises and building her castles in the air (because she always said he had his head in the clouds and he loves the rush of the wind, and he'd give her the whole world for a stomping ground if he could, so why not now, in however much time they've got left?)

"This will all be over someday. He's not going to be around anymore, and you and I are going to be free to do whatever we like, and Harry will know what it means to play in the grass and fly a broom somewhere that's not the sitting room, and we'll sell this place and go wherever you want. It'll be wonderful, Lil: we'll go somewhere with plenty of sunshine, get a house with enormous windows and huge old trees in the yard, and it'll be perfect. It'll have gnomes and maybe a pond and a big porch for us to sit on, and we'll watch our kids play and grow old together, and we'll forget _this_ ever happened.

"And there'll be a garden, Lil: an enormous, lovely garden that you can do whatever you like in. You can plant your sunflowers and poppies and lilies and bells of Ireland and your herbs and whatever crazy demon plant Alice decides you absolutely need next because your garden won't be complete without it. And it'll bloom so large and bright and colorful that we'll always have flowers in the house, and you can spend all day outside, working in the soil and making things grow. And in the spring it'll smell like heaven and we'll spend hours and hours and hours outside in the fresh air and just get lost in it, and I'll bundle you and Harry and whoever comes along next up inside of it, and we'll never have to leave."

His chest is heaving by the end of his speech, eyes frantic and pleading (because he wants this _So. Damn. Badly._, and he's hoping she'll see that he loves her more than anything and he wants to give her that future more than he can say and _he's so unspeakably sorry that this is what she got for choosing him when she could have had so much more_).

He's not quite sure how he's expecting her to react, but he's as shocked as anything when she smiles gently up at him and reaches up to tenderly cup his cheek with her soft, pale hand.

"You know how desperately I love you, right?" she asks quietly, and the utter emotion in her tone nearly bowls him over. She grins up at him, and for once, her smile doesn't seem weighted with cares. "Only you, James, would think to remember the garden."

(Her eyes flash with the promises he's made as she bundles them close to her heart, and the green of her irises stands out more brilliantly against the light in her eyes that he first fell in love with.)

...Years later, de-gnoming the wild, vibrant garden of The Burrow with Ron as Ginny and Hermione set out a picnic luncheon befitting the warm, sunny summer day, Harry Potter drew in a deep breath and wondered why he felt such a sudden and fierce upwelling of perfect and complete contentment.

* * *

_Where have all the flowers gone?  
Long time passing  
Where have all the flowers gone?  
Long time ago  
__  
-__Pete Seeger, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"_


End file.
